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Chinese-speaking users are the target of a never-before-seen threat activity cluster codenamed Void Arachne that employs malicious Windows Installer (MSI) files for virtual private networks (VPNs) to deliver a command-and-control (C&C) framework called Winos 4.0. "The campaign also promotes compromised MSI files embedded with nudifiers and deepfake pornography-generating software, as well as AI voice and facial technologies," Trend Micro researchers Peter Girnus, Aliakbar Zahravi, and Ahmed Mohamed Ibrahim said in a technical report published today. "The campaign uses [Search Engine Optimization] poisoning tactics and social media and messaging platforms to distribute malware." The security vendor, which discovered the new threat actor group in early April 2024, said the attacks entail advertising popular software such as Google Chrome, LetsVPN, QuickVPN, and a Telegram language pack for the Simplified Chinese language to distribute Winos. Alternate attack...

A threat actor who goes by alias markopolo has been identified as behind a large-scale cross-platform scam that targets digital currency users on social media with information stealer malware and carries out cryptocurrency theft. The attack chains involve the use of a purported virtual meeting software named Vortax (and 23 other apps) that are used as a conduit to deliver Rhadamanthys , StealC , and Atomic macOS Stealer (AMOS), Recorded Future's Insikt Group said in an analysis published this week. "This campaign, primarily targeting cryptocurrency users, marks a significant rise in macOS security threats and reveals an expansive network of malicious applications," the cybersecurity company noted , describing markopolo as "agile, adaptable, and versatile." There is evidence connecting the Vortax campaign to prior activity that leveraged trap phishing techniques to target macOS and Windows users via Web3 gaming lures. A crucial aspect of the malicious o...

Two security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in the Mailcow open-source mail server suite that could be exploited by malicious actors to achieve arbitrary code execution on susceptible instances. Both shortcomings impact all versions of the software prior to version 2024-04 , which was released on April 4, 2024. The issues were responsibly disclosed by SonarSource on March 22, 2024. The flaws, rated Moderate in severity, are listed below - CVE-2024-30270 (CVSS score: 6.7) - A path traversal vulnerability impacting a function named "rspamd_maps()" that could result in the execution of arbitrary commands on the server by allowing a threat actor to overwrite any file that's can be modified with the "www-data" user CVE-2024-31204 (CVSS score: 6.8) - A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability via the exception handling mechanism when not operating in the DEV_MODE The second of the two flaws is rooted in the fact that it saves details of the exception...

A controversial proposal put forth by the European Union to scan users' private messages for detection of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) poses severe risks to end-to-end encryption (E2EE), warned Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation, which maintains the privacy-focused messaging service of the same name. "Mandating mass scanning of private communications fundamentally undermines encryption. Full Stop," Whittaker said in a statement on Monday. "Whether this happens via tampering with, for instance, an encryption algorithm's random number generation, or by implementing a key escrow system, or by forcing communications to pass through a surveillance system before they're encrypted." The response comes as law makers in Europe are putting forth regulations to fight CSAM with a new provision called "upload moderation" that allows for messages to be scrutinized ahead of encryption. A recent report from Euractiv revealed that...

Threat actors are luring unsuspecting users with free or pirated versions of commercial software to deliver a malware loader called Hijack Loader , which then deploys an information stealer known as Vidar Stealer . "Adversaries had managed to trick users into downloading password-protected archive files containing trojanized copies of a Cisco Webex Meetings App (ptService.exe)," Trellix security researcher Ale Houspanossian said in a Monday analysis. "When unsuspecting victims extracted and executed a 'Setup.exe' binary file, the Cisco Webex Meetings application covertly loaded a stealthy malware loader, which led to the execution of an information-stealing module." The starting point is a RAR archive file that contains an executable name "Setup.exe," but in reality is a copy of Cisco Webex Meetings's ptService module. What makes the campaign noteworthy is the use of DLL side-loading techniques to stealthily launch Hijack Loader (aka DOI...

Seventy percent of enterprises are prioritizing investment in SaaS security by establishing dedicated teams to secure SaaS applications, as part of a growing trend of maturity in this field of cybersecurity, according to a new survey released this month by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA). Despite economic instability and major job cuts in 2023, organizations drastically increased investment in SaaS security. In fact, the survey found, enterprises added headcount to SaaS security in 2023, increasing SaaS security staff by 56%, as well as increasing budgets by 39%. Figure 1: How investment in SaaS security has shifted from 2022 to 2023 The fourth annual SaaS security survey , "2025 CISO Plans and Priorities," was conducted by the CSA and commissioned by SaaS security leader Adaptive Shield . A total of 478 global security professionals participated in the survey, across all verticals. The survey shares their perspective on SaaS security successes and challenges as CISOs prepare t...

Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new malware campaign that targets publicly exposed Docket API endpoints with the aim of delivering cryptocurrency miners and other payloads. Included among the tools deployed is a remote access tool that's capable of downloading and executing more malicious programs as well as a utility to propagate the malware via SSH, cloud analytics platform Datadog said in a report published last week. Analysis of the campaign has uncovered tactical overlaps with a previous activity dubbed Spinning YARN , which was observed targeting misconfigured Apache Hadoop YARN, Docker, Atlassian Confluence, and Redis services for cryptojacking purposes. The attack commences with the threat actors zeroing in on Docker servers with exposed ports (port number 2375 ) to initiate a series of steps, starting with reconnaissance and privilege escalation before proceeding to the exploitation phase. Payloads are retrieved from adversary-controlled infrastructure by...

VMware has released updates to address critical flaws impacting Cloud Foundation, vCenter Server, and vSphere ESXi that could be exploited to achieve privilege escalation and remote code execution. The list of vulnerabilities is as follows - CVE-2024-37079 & CVE-2024-37080 (CVSS scores: 9.8) - Multiple heap-overflow vulnerabilities in the implementation of the DCE/RPC protocol that could allow a bad actor with network access to vCenter Server to achieve remote code execution by sending a specially crafted network packet CVE-2024-37081 (CVSS score: 7.8) - Multiple local privilege escalation vulnerabilities in VMware vCenter arising due to the misconfiguration of sudo that an authenticated local user with non-administrative privileges could exploit to obtain root permissions This is not the first time VMware has addressed shortcomings in the implementation of the DCE/RPC protocol. In October 2023, the Broadcom-owned virtualization services provider patched another criti...

The Singapore Police Force (SPF) has announced the extradition of two men from Malaysia for their alleged involvement in a mobile malware campaign targeting citizens in the country since June 2023. The unnamed individuals, aged 26 and 47, engaged in scams that tricked unsuspecting users into downloading malicious apps onto their Android devices via phishing campaigns with the aim of stealing their personal data and banking credentials. The stolen information was subsequently used to initiate fraudulent transactions on the victims' banking accounts, resulting in financial losses. Following a seven-months-long investigation that was launched in November 2023 in partnership with the Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF) and the Royal Malaysia Police (RMP), the SPF said it found evidence linking the two men to a syndicate responsible for carrying out malware-enabled scams. "The two men [...] allegedly operated servers for the purposes of infecting victims' Android mobile phones w...

ASUS has shipped software updates to address a critical security flaw impacting its routers that could be exploited by malicious actors to bypass authentication. Tracked as CVE-2024-3080 , the vulnerability carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of a maximum of 10.0. "Certain ASUS router models have authentication bypass vulnerability, allowing unauthenticated remote attackers to log in the device," according to a description of the flaw shared by the Taiwan Computer Emergency Response Team / Coordination Center (TWCERT/CC). Also patched by the Taiwanese company is a high-severity buffer overflow flaw tracked as CVE-2024-3079 (CVSS score: 7.2) that could be weaponized by remote attackers with administrative privileges to execute arbitrary commands on the device. In a hypothetical attack scenario, a bad actor could fashion CVE-2024-3080 and CVE-2024-3079 into an exploit chain in order to sidestep authentication and execute malicious code on susceptible devices. Both the shor...